


Treasure

by MoreThanSlightly (cadignan)



Series: Author Favorites [10]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Dating, F/M, Family, Fluff, Food, Humans Are Weird, Hurt/Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, Krolia Is My Forever Fave, Language, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 08:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16092254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadignan/pseuds/MoreThanSlightly
Summary: Someone drags her from the wreckage. There’s too much blood in her eyes to see. She hurts everywhere, and yet her body still catalogs its minor complaints: the scorching air, the dust sticking to her skin and fur, the acrid smoke of the ruined engine in her nostrils.Worth it, to keep the Empire from this treasure.It is not all misery: someone is speaking soothing foreign words and laying her on a soft surface. Unexpected. Not much in her life is soft. Perhaps she died in the crash after all.Krolia crashes her ship on Earth and falls in love.





	Treasure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [verity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/gifts).



Someone drags her from the wreckage. There’s too much blood in her eyes to see. She hurts everywhere, and yet her body still catalogs its minor complaints: the scorching air, the dust sticking to her skin and fur, the acrid smoke of the ruined engine in her nostrils.

Worth it, to keep the Empire from this treasure.

It is not all misery: someone is speaking soothing foreign words and laying her on a soft surface. Unexpected. Not much in her life is soft. Perhaps she died in the crash after all.

* * *

 

The alien speaks to her. It is bipedal and mostly hairless. Beige colored with some darker brown patches of hair. It does not have a tail or claws. Krolia did not bother to learn about the inhabitants of this planet when she came here—either she would leave immediately after completing her mission or die in the attempt—but she rather likes this one. This place is called Earth, so logically her host is an Earthling. Unlike her own kind, the Earthling has not tried to kill her, as she initially assumed it would.

The Earthling is foolish and defenseless, but in its way, it is also fearless. Most creatures in the galaxy know better than to bring a Galra into their home. But this one has made a project of healing her, and it brings her strange foods and medicines and changes her bandages.

She lies in bed most of the time, too tired and injured to do anything but sleep or stare at her surroundings. On the first quintant, her host had half-carried her into the bathroom and helped her use its odd, primitive equipment to void her body and cleanse it. At the time, she was in too much pain to object to having her armor removed by a stranger. She has since refused all further attempts at help.

Is washing not an intimate ritual to Earthlings? It is intimate to the Galra. Yet the Earthling did not try to take advantage of her. (Its life is proof. Even in her dazed, wounded state, she could have slit her host’s exposed throat with a claw.) Can it really, truly be kindness that motivates this creature to help her?

If it is kindness, why did she have to come all the way to the edge of the universe to experience it?

* * *

 

On the third quintant, the Earthling leaves a device in the room with her. It is a quaint version of a display screen, and it plays what Krolia suspects are fictional dramas all quintant long.

She’s been a spy all her life for good reason. New cultures and languages come easily to her—at least, when she’s not languishing in convalescence. She studies the images and the sounds the device produces.

Earthlings seem to come in two main sexes, although it’s possible there are more. Like Galra, the males are larger. The ones in the dramas dress and wear their hair like her host, so she begins to think of the Earthling as _him_.

It was sweet of him to provide her with this device. His behavior is rather miraculous, considering. In the dramas, there is no evidence that Earthlings know of other life forms. Her host has never met anyone who even remotely resembles Krolia, even though the Galra have overrun the galaxy for the past ten thousand years.

He probably thinks of _her_ as an alien. That thought drives a creaky laugh from her underused throat.

Galra might as well be garden pests for how common they are. Except they’re garden pests that might enslave or slaughter your whole civilization. She should have realized right away that the Earthling didn’t know about the Empire when he wasn’t afraid of her.

There’s a thought to mute any further laughter. She took out all the ships that were following her, but what if more come? She has to defend this place, where soft, foolish Earthlings bring deadly Galra agents into their homes to clean their wounds.

Time passes. The Earthling doesn’t usually come to her while the sun is out, so he must have some occupation. That’s just as well. Krolia has an occupation of her own.

She listens. Scene after scene, sentence after sentence, word after word. What are the most common sounds? How do they structure their thoughts into language? She can do it. She can’t walk, and even if she could, she has no ship. She’s not going anywhere for a long time.

When he comes into the room as the light is fading, she points at herself and says, “Krolia.”

Earthlings are similar enough to Galra that she knows his reaction is a smile. He is furless and fangless, with eyes that reflect nothing, but she likes his face anyway.

“Lee,” he says, and Krolia smiles back.

* * *

 

Lee teaches her _yes_ and _no_ , and they make quick progress after that. So far, their main topic of conversation is food. Her Earthling has brought her quite a variety over the past few quintants, and while Krolia hates to be an ungrateful guest, there are some things he should know.

“Beef, yes,” she tells him.

He gives her a cheerful acknowledgement in return. As she suspected, her reactions have already made things clear to him.

“Chicken soup, yes.” That one was harder to learn, but she knows she pronounced it right because he nods.

He waits for her to say something else.

“Grapes, no.” That one was also hard to say, but the little purple fruits had made her throw up. She mimes this for him, and he looks horrified.

He repeats the same few sounds a few times, and after a while, she parses: “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

An apology. She puts a hand on his arm to stop him. He doesn’t have fur, but there’s a dusting of dark hair over his skin, and he’s warm to the touch.

His gaze catches on her hand. It’s the first time they’ve touched that has nothing to do with cleaning her wounds or changing her bandages. That is to say, it’s the first time _she_ has touched him.

She’s glad it wasn’t with her claws or her fangs.

He nods once and says, “Okay.”

Krolia files the sound away for later use. She keeps her hand on his arm, and in a charming and delightful development, the beige skin of his face turns pink.

She smiles. He withdraws his arm and hurries out of the room.

* * *

 

The next quintant, she repeats phrases from the fictional dramas over and over, and when Lee comes in, she tries all of them.

She points at the screen as a way of citing her source. Most of her phrases get encouraging nods and responses like “good job.” She doesn’t always know exactly what she’s saying yet, but she’s saying it right. He’s proud of her progress.

“Fifty percent off mattresses this week only!” makes him howl with laughter. Krolia isn’t exactly sure why, but the sight of him gasping, with tears in the corners of his eyes, makes her laugh too. In his fit, he folds from sitting politely on the edge of her bed to gripping her shoulder for support. His body shudders next to hers, solid and warm.

* * *

 

He teaches her a children’s game with red and black gamepieces that move around a checkered board. He wins the first game. She affects uncertainty and ignorance in game two and takes advantage of his pity to deal him a crushing defeat.

He pretends to be outraged. When she smiles with her fangs, he stares a second too long.

* * *

 

He brings her Earth clothes. He’s adorably embarrassed about it. Apparently the borrowed clothes she’s been wearing (a _t-shirt_ and _boxers_ ) are not appropriate outside the home. Krolia hasn’t felt up to going anywhere besides the bathroom, but it’s thoughtful of him to give her the option.

He brings her another t-shirt, this one red and sleeveless, and looks everywhere except her face as he says, “If you don’t like it, I’ll get you a different one. I’m not great at this.”

It almost matches the color of his face when he’s thinking about her, but Krolia keeps that thought to herself.

His face gets even more flushed when she strips his t-shirt off before taking the new one from his hands. He turns away and splutters something about “human women don’t usually—” and then shuts his mouth and cautiously turns back toward her.

Krolia smiles and shrugs, still topless. Galra women don’t _usually_ , either, but who’s going to tell him that?

He stares more boldly, now that he has permission. His throat works. “I, uh, forgot to buy you a bra.”

She doesn’t know that word, but given what he’s staring at, it must be a garment meant for her breasts. The undersuit of her armor has one built in.

“I’ll live,” she tells him.

She cups her breasts to emphasize how small they are—and maybe also how high, how tight, how touchable—then pulls the t-shirt over her head and walks to the bathroom mirror while he chokes.

* * *

 

She finds out where he goes when he's not at home. He gets called away in the darkness and comes back later, smelling of smoke. He turns on one light in the kitchen and slumps over the kitchen table with a beer. (She recognizes the bottle. He’d offered her one last quintant and then laughed at the face she made when the fizzy, bitter liquid touched her tongue.)

Krolia finds him sitting like that, the whole house dark except for the solitary pool of yellow light in the kitchen. He smells of sweat and smoke. His face droops in the same way her comrades’ do when they come back from a mission minus one agent. Suddenly, their easy connection makes a terrible kind of sense. He might not be deep undercover fighting the Galra Empire, but just like her, he throws himself into danger.

She knows without asking that it was a fire. Now that she thinks of it, he often smells of smoke. It is no wonder that this dry, hot place has people whose occupation it is to put out fires.

And no wonder that sometimes, the fire wins.

“I’m sorry.” She emerges from the shadowed kitchen to stand behind him in the island of light. She squeezes his shoulder, and his hand finds hers and holds fast.

She sits with him while he finishes the beer in silence. He gives her a smile that’s more fatigue and despair than anything else, and then she takes his hand and leads him to bed.

They don’t sleep together. Krolia has studied his form—she has little else to do—and she suspects that they _could_ , if they wanted to. Traveling the far reaches of the Empire has taught her that interspecies sex is almost always possible if all parties are sufficiently enthusiastic. Neither of them possesses enough of that tonight, so Krolia gets under the blanket behind him and pulls him to her.

She has never been close enough to hear his heartbeat. The rhythm is slow and foreign, but no less soothing.

* * *

 

Time passes. Krolia heals. She grows restless in the confines of the room. She exercises dutifully every day—that’s what they call a single rotation of the planet here—and she moves from listening and speaking to reading and writing the language that Lee calls English, but it isn’t enough to occupy her. She wants to go outside.

“My ship,” she tells him. “I want to see it.”

“It’s broken,” he says. He keeps his sentence simple for the same reason he does everything else—kindness—but Krolia wishes he wouldn’t. She likes a challenge.

“I know,” she says, exasperated. She’d been in it when it crashed. “Show me anyway.”

She’s very proud of this word _anyway_. All these inessential words, the little flourishes, that’s what makes you sound like you know the language. She’s getting good at this one.

Lee’s house is out in the middle of the desert. There’s a single well-tended tree next to it, but all the other plants are low and scrubby. There’s not much good cover. He assures her no one will come by. Krolia hasn’t been outside since she crashed. She’d thought it was the heat of engine that made the air so scorching, but it turns out that’s Earth’s climate in this particular place.

“It’s not so hot, other places,” Lee says. “But this is home.”

The remains of her ship have been dragged into the barn next to the house and covered with a tarp. She salvages a few things from the interior—rations, a med kit, a collection of small explosives—but there’s nothing to be done for the ship itself.

“It won’t fly again,” she says. “If I had another, I could strip this one for parts, but by itself, it’s done.”

He gives her a very solemn nod, like this moment might be delicate for her, the realization that she can’t ever leave. Should she feel crushed? Despairing? She thinks about the way Lee said _this is home_ about his little house in this crackling dry plain where the horizon is always smudged with heat. He was so sure. Krolia has never felt that way about any place. There has only ever been one mission, and then the next. The only sure thing is the threat of death. The wrong word to a Galra soldier, the wrong turn into the deadly debris field of space—death lurks around every corner.

Out here in the desert, there’s fewer places to hide. Krolia has no illusions. She hasn’t escaped death, because no one does. But in this place, she’ll see it coming from a long way off.

After a suitably long pause, Lee shifts his weight from one foot to the other and says, “You’re welcome to stay with me.”

Krolia feels such a lightness that she laughs out loud, and then when he stares at her in bewilderment, she hugs him.

* * *

 

She tells him about the Empire, and the Blade of Marmora, and what drew her to Earth. Telling him the story is like visiting an exhibition on human facial expressions, since he makes pretty much every possible variation—mouth open in shock, brows drawn down in anger, eyes blinking in confusion. It’s more fun to watch him than it is to relive the endless war of her life.

“Should we look for it?” he asks. “The Blue Lion?”

They hike out into the desert, following the readings from Krolia’s tablet. Her thighs burn with the effort, but she feels free out here. She’s never told a secret before, let alone all of them at once. What a marvelously transgressive thing to do. And he’s still here beside her, this strange, fearless human man. He possesses a strength, in his kindness, that no amount of troops or weaponry could ever furnish. Every warlord and general in the Empire is a coward next to him.

When they find the Blue Lion, she tells him crashing her ship was the best thing that ever happened to her, and he tells her he wants to help.

 _I know_ , she thinks. Instead of saying the words, she kisses him, pushes him down to the cave floor, and fucks him until he gasps her name.

* * *

 

He sings on the hike home, and she demands to know if all Earth music is terrible.

When they get home, they sprawl on the couch in the living room while he uses his tablet to take her on a guided tour of the musical highlights of the last century. As with any new culture, large swaths of it unappealing, but she tries to be polite about it. Etiquette is an important skill for spies, but it has never been one of her strengths. He knows she is lying, and he laughs about it.

“Fine,” she says. “If you want my real opinion—why are they all men? Why are all the most celebrated and revered musicians male? And why do they sing like human women are something to be owned?”

This unleashes a long, apologetic explanation of the sexual and gender politics of Earth, which are depressingly primitive. She had thought, out here away from the repressive shadow of the empire, that more enlightened cultures might have flourished.

She frowns. “If all this is true, then… what we did—” she knows the English words by now but she avoids them out of sensitivity for his feelings “—was it shocking to you?”

He laughs again. “The rest of this planet might be backwards, but I’m trying my best not to be. As for what we did—in case you couldn’t tell, I liked it. Wouldn’t mind doing it again.”

“It doesn’t threaten you that I… assert myself?”

He gives her a lazy, lopsided grin. “Assert yourself any time you want.”

Krolia asserts herself on the living room floor and then again in bed that night.

* * *

 

The next day, he plays her different music.

Krolia is thrilled to discover that this place—Texas—is particularly famous for one style of music, and that style of music has a subgenre dedicated to human women singing about the vengeance they have wrought on the cruel, unfaithful, and generally worthless men who have wronged them or their friends. She likes it very much.

Pleased with himself for discovering something she likes, he tries again. He plays her a few varieties of antiauthoritarian music. It’s all loud and angry. The Empire has a robust system of censorship, but there are backwater planets where such genres flourish, and Krolia is amused by the stylistic consistency.

“I like humans,” she declares. “Are there others around?”

“I guess I could take you into the city,” he says, at long last. “You’d have to wear a disguise or something so we don’t cause an incident. Nobody else here knows about aliens.”

Krolia makes a dismissive gesture. “I’m a spy. I’ll wear whatever you want.”

* * *

 

He comes home the next day with bags full of clothes and makeup, and together they assemble something that makes her look, if not human, then at least not noticeably Galra. She covers most of her body with clothing, her hair with a long dark wig, and her face with an absurd amount of makeup and a pair of oversize sunglasses.

“For what it’s worth, I like the original flavor better,” he says. “But you’ll do.”

They drive into the city, allowing Krolia her first view of anything outside his farm. It’s a collection of tall, rectangular buildings in the center, and miles of low-lying sprawl around it. They park in a garage and walk out into the sunlight. Lee is jumpy like it’s his first mission. She takes his hand.

“Nobody knows but us,” she says. “They’re not going to guess.”

“But if they did, the consequences—”

“Aren’t going to happen,” she says. A river runs through the city, and there are small boats paddling down it, and crowds of people ambling along its edges. “Who here could take me?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I know you’re tough. You could take out a dozen tourists. That’s not what I’m worried—”

“Only a dozen?”

“That’s what you’re fixated on?”

“I could take out twenty, minimum,” Krolia says. “I watched that show where humans compete to do feats of strength, and none of them can lift a fraction of what I can lift. I’m not even especially strong for my kind. And they’re so slow!”

He shakes his head. At least he’s irritated with her instead of worrying they’ll get caught.

“What are those?” she asks, watching a family depart from a shop with colorful foods in hand. “Buy me one.”

“It’s ice cream,” he says. “It’s made of milk. Comes from cows, like beef. But the cows don’t die to produce it.”

She nods. He’d been concerned that this would upset her, but Galra are born carnivores. It’s a far less upsetting behavior to eat meat than it is to conquer a planet and devastate its population.

Besides, she has breasts. She knows where milk comes from.

He buys her _a waffle cone_ with _vanilla_ , because it’s _classic_ , and when she asks what vanilla is, he explains that it’s the seed pod for some flower that only grows in the rainforest of a distant island. “Sounds difficult to acquire,” she says, and immediately adjusts her opinion after tasting it. It’s worth it.

They sit on a bench to finish the ice cream. Krolia could watch these people for hours, wondering about their relationships and family structures, their private lives. What was it like to grow up outside the Empire’s reach? Were all of them so fearless?

Who might she have been, freed from the shape tyranny had crushed her into?

Who might she become, now that she’s staying?

She doesn’t ask these questions out loud. She can’t imagine anyone on this planet knowing the answers. Sunlight shimmers on the surface of the water and she watches a group of parents and children pass by on the other bank.

A young girl gets too curious and her mother has to scoop her up before she tumbles in. Somehow, Krolia identifies with both of them at once. _If I had a kid_ , she thinks, and then can’t finish the thought because it’s so wildly novel.

Blades of Marmora don’t have children, as a rule. The life is too dangerous.

She’s never allowed herself to think of it before. She’s not ready to speak it into reality just yet.

They get up and keep strolling, and eventually she says, “Is this what you’d do with another human?”

He lets out a low, uneasy chuckle. “Well. I suppose. You know, I live out there in the desert all alone because I’m not great with people. There weren’t a lot of other women, before you.”

“You only like women?” Krolia asks.

“Uh. Yeah. Why? Do you…”

She shrugs. “It’s a big empire. Sometimes figuring out how an alien’s sex corresponds to your own understanding of sexes takes more time than actually fucking.”

He bites off too much ice cream and obviously regrets it.

Krolia snickers at his scrunched-up face. Then she takes pity of him and shifts the conversation back. “What else would we do? If we were engaged in some kind of courtship?”

“Lots of people go to bars, I guess? I could buy you a drink. People go to dinner, they go to the movies, they go dancing. They go hiking in the desert, too. They just don’t usually end up where we ended up.”

“Is the drink beer?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Then let’s do that.”

The drink, as it turns out, is whiskey. It’s earthy and smoky, and if Krolia focuses, she can taste a hint of vanilla. They drink on a riverside terrace so she can keep her sunglasses on and not be too conspicuous—a concession to his concerns. Some day Krolia will get him to take her in one of those dim, seedy-looking places they passed on the way here. That’s where all the best intelligence is.

She has no need to look for intelligence anymore. Maybe her former career has given her a lifelong affection for dives.

“So what else?” she asks. “Pretend I’m your _girlfriend_. What’s next?”

“Uh,” he says, and his lips twist with real worry. “Just a sec. Are you… are you not my girlfriend?”

The question makes him blush, and she will never, ever get tired of that. She squeezes his hand under the table. Her hands are covered in body paint and her claws are painted red—he’d insisted this would make them less noticeable, somehow, and she’d submitted to the process because he’d been so charmingly focused on painting them correctly—but the touch isn’t artificial. “I was trying not to say ‘pretend I’m your _human_ girlfriend’ out of deference to your fears.”

“Oh.” He exhales. “Whew. That’s good. I was gonna say, we’ve been having a lot of sex for two people who aren’t…”

Humans are easily stressed out about sex and whether it is or isn’t attached to romantic feelings and promises of exclusive commitment. The TV shows have taught her. “I’d love to be your girlfriend,” Krolia says.

He beams at her. “In that case, I’d definitely take you home with me.”

* * *

 

While they’re lying in bed, he says, “So what would _you_ be doing, if we were, uh, engaged in a Galra courtship ritual?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she says. “I never thought I’d do any of this stuff. I never had the luxury. I’ve been settling for quick, illicit storage-room fucks my whole life. No one’s _ever_ done that thing you do with your tongue to me before.”

“Mm, so that’s why you’re staying on Earth.”

“Well, that and my ship blew up.”

He snorts, and half an hour later, staring up at the ceiling in post-sex languor, she sighs happily. “You’re right, it’s definitely the tongue thing.”

* * *

 

Krolia has never not had a mission.

She told Lee her mission was keeping the Blue Lion safe, but as long as no one’s threatening it, that doesn’t give her anything to _do_.

She’s never been bored before. Or useless. She learns about dishes, and laundry, and vacuums, and microwaves. She cooks and bakes with varying results. She reads every book in the house cover to cover. Lee explains about the public library and gives her access to his account so she can download more books. She starts reading histories of Earth. It’s great, but it doesn’t fill up all her time.

She reads a book on gardening, puts on her human costume, drives herself to a nursery and come back with a trunkload of plants. Some are decorative and some are edible, although she’s not certain that description applies in her case. She plans to find out.

Tending the garden still doesn’t take up all her time, so she repaints the whole house, inside and out, and fixes every stuck drawer and creaky hinge (that’s all of them). She rewires the whole place to make it safer. She adjusts the array of solar panels to maximize their efficiency. She convinces Lee to let her keep bees and chickens. She even cleans out the barn, except the remains of her ship, which can’t be disposed of without attracting unwanted attention.

By then it’s been about two months, and her breasts hurt all the time, and she thinks _oh_.

Maybe she has a mission after all.

* * *

 

What if Lee doesn’t want a half-Galra baby? If he isn’t happy to hear the news, she doesn’t know what she’ll do. When she landed months ago, she’d idly contemplated slitting his throat if he so much as touched her wrong. But now she can’t do that. She loves him.

She might love her baby more.

Is that wrong?

Krolia digs her trowel into the sandy earth with unnecessary ferocity. He’d better love this baby.

* * *

 

In the end, he brings it up first. It feels right. He’s fearless, after all. They’re in bed together and she flinches when he runs a hand over her aching breasts.

“Honey,” he says, in a tone of extreme caution. “How do you feel about… kids?”

“Good. Very good. I love them and I want them very much. Why? How do _you_ feel about them?”

He blinks. Maybe that was a little too aggressive. “I was just wondering,” he says in that slow drawl of his, “if there was a chance you might be pregnant.”

He’s smiling. It’s okay. She releases a breath. “There is. I am.”

He takes her by the shoulders and presses a joyful kiss to her mouth, then laughs. “So this ‘I love them and I want them very much’ isn’t hypothetical, huh?”

“There’s only one, as far as I know,” Krolia says. She lays a hand over her stomach, still flat for now. “But I do love them and want them very much.”

He puts his hand on hers. “Me too.”

* * *

 

She wakes him up four hours later and says, “Even if the baby comes out looking like me?”

“Especially if the baby comes out looking like you,” he says. “I love you. Go back to sleep.”

She flops back against her pillow, and into the darkness, she says, “I love you, too.”

* * *

 

Her body is a rocket and she is strapped in for the ride. Sometimes she bounds out of bed bursting with excitement; sometimes one tiny frustration makes her eyes spill with tears.

She craves comfort food she can’t explain to Lee: the fresh fruits of her long-ago childhood on a backwater farm planet, the sour, fried seaside-resort treats she’d eaten on her most pleasant mission, a gooey candy bar from a particular vending machine in the sub-basement of a remote outpost where she’d been embedded for a deca-phoeb.

He brings her blueberries, and fried pickles, and chocolate with salted caramel. She keeps most of it down.

He also brings her new clothes to fit over the swell of her belly. He rubs her feet, which are getting harder to see. He gently suggests that she not repair the roof by herself while pregnant, which makes her burst into tears, for which she then profusely apologizes. Who the hell is she? She’s never felt like this in her life.

Together, they read twelve books on home birth and Krolia throws her tablet down to the foot of the bed in frustration. “What good is this? I’m not human! I’m not having a human birth!”

“Hey,” he says. “Think about how many humans there are on this planet, and how many Galra there are in the galaxy. A ton of them have given birth at home, or on space ships, or generally in less than ideal circumstances, right? And statistically, _some_ of those people have been dumber than us. So we’re gonna figure it out. We’re gonna be okay. It’s math.”

“Math,” she says dubiously.

“Plus, that baby is half you and half me. It’s gonna be the toughest motherfucker who’s ever lived.”

“ _My_ half, maybe,” she says, trying to hide her smile behind a fake glower. He bumps her gently over the head with a pillow.

* * *

 

She cries when he puts the baby in her arms, but so does he, and so does the baby, so that’s alright. She feels so much for him, this tiny child who can have all the best parts of his father and herself, who can grow up far from the war and the Empire, with two parents who love him, that she almost can’t speak. Somehow his arrival knocked over her heart and simultaneously rebuilt it into a new shape.

She cradles him in her arms and leans down until their foreheads are pressed together. “Hi,” she whispers.

 _I would kill or die for you_ , she thinks, knowing it with absolute certainty. But she doesn’t say it. She doesn’t want him to know those things yet. He’ll learn eventually, but right now she wants soft things for him. The kindness she didn’t know existed until Lee dragged her out of her ship.

“I love you.”

* * *

 

When the Empire’s scouts arrive, she has a terrible feeling of the inevitable. She’d saved those explosives for all this time. Somehow, in her heart, she had known it couldn’t last.

That doesn’t make it hurt any less.

* * *

 

She’s crying so hard when she takes off that she has to rely on autopilot to get out of the atmosphere.

 _Six months_ , she thinks. Enough time to see him learn to smile and clap. Not enough time to hear his first word. Not enough time to watch his first steps.

She’s going to miss so much more than that.

Krolia has suffered, but she never felt pain like this. She didn’t even know it was possible. There’s a cruel symmetry to it. In her departure from Earth, she thinks exactly the same thing as when she arrived.

 _Worth it, to keep the Empire from this treasure_.

* * *

 

Years later, her bruised heart knows him instantly. She both wants and does not want to believe it. Her son, out here in the violence and terror of the Empire. Her son, the toughest motherfucker alive.

When he asks her how she could use the blade, she looks him in the eye and says, “Because it used to be mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you, too, have a lot of Krolia feelings, then you should come tell me about them on [tumblr](http://morethanslightly.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/_cadignan).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Plant & Sow (I just want to watch you grow)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17819786) by [penguinjacques](https://archiveofourown.org/users/penguinjacques/pseuds/penguinjacques)




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